British Isil Beatles set to be charged in US over kidnapping and killing of Western hostages

October 7, 2020

British Islamic State militants dubbed The Beatles are set to be indicted in the US over the kidnapping and killing of Western hostages, The Telegraph understands.

Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, from London, who are accused of being complicit in the murders of 27 people, are expected to be formally charged by the US Department of Justice later on Wednesday.

The pair will be flown in the coming weeks to the US from al-Asad air base in Iraq, where they have been held for the past year, according to a US source with knowledge of the case.

Kotey, 36, and ElSheikh, 32, who have had their British citizenship revoked by the Home Office, will be prosecuted in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, which handles high profile national security cases.

The source said they will likely face charges including conspiracy to commit homicide, hostage-taking resulting in death, and kidnapping resulting in homicide. They murdered two dozen hostages including Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller, and at least eight other hostages from different countries, including the UK. It is not clear if the men will be directly implicated in the capture and killing of British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, two victims of the four-man cell of jihadists. The accused claim they took part in torturing them and extracting information but that they did not take part in their executions.

The move had been held up by disagreements between the US and the UK as to whether the latter would allow the men to stand trial in the US over objection over the death penalty. The mother of ElSheikh had sought to block a US prosecution because of the prospect of execution if convicted. She lost her appeal at the High Court after Bill Barr, US Attorney General, gave assurances that he would not seek the death penalty for the men. This met with the agreement of their victims’s families, who said they rather learn the truth of what happened to their loved ones through a trial.